(Semi) Blind Doom 1/2 Run and Thoughts

[Sw33t Angela]

I'm new to playing Doom 1 and 2 and have had interest piqued recently after watching Decino vids. I've not played much of Doom 1 and 2 before so I'm trying my hand at it, starting at Ultra Violence. It's quite a bit harder than I was expecting. Currently running on the KEX engine that was recently released for Doom 1 + Doom 2.

 

I've so far finished the first episode and am on E2M7 currently. I want to write out my thoughts as someone who's mostly fresh at this game would be an interesting insight.

 

Episode 1 was pretty good. A lot of nice levels that were fairly memorable. Found the hidden exit myself, a few times I looked up on the wiki where some secrets were especially in E1M2. The timed doors/platforms in one of the computer rooms are frustrating and I don't like those secrets. Ultra violence gave a nice challenge, but sometimes I wish I had more ammo to play with the weapons more.

Episode 2 is getting a lot harder, as expected, but the maps and enemy layout are starting to get annoying on ultra violence. A lot of the rooms look same-y; the symmetrical and featureless rooms are frustrating to navigate without having to look at my map all the time (LOOKING AT YOU E2M5). More darker areas are also adding to the confusion but sometimes they add to suspense especially when powerful monsters are around and I feel lost, so it's not a huge negative. I'm starting to abandon trying to find a lot of secrets as the difficulty is starting to make me less wanting to search, especially at the end of E2M6 where you grab a red key and then a ton of pinkies and barons of hell come out.

The biggest thing that's getting in the way of having fun is the lack of ammo. If I carry things forward from a previous level, fine, but if I die, starting with a pistol and not having a secret near me is getting frustrating. E2M6 has you start out against Imps and shotgunners which is okay but there's not a secret to get more ammo AFAIK before you have to open a door and out pops a pinky and a beholder and all I have is two rockets and a shotgun. I can get it done but it's wearing on me. I understand that lack of ammo makes figuring out the best weapons to use to conserve ammo and get through enemies a nice challenge, but RNG of damage/accuracy and me praying a shot does more damage can make that concept a lot less enjoyable.

 

And now I'm on E2M7. Started it, had blue armor and several weapons, saw a pinky right in front, forgot I had a rocket launcher equipped, fired, and died due to the explosion. Ugh. I'm stuck on this level as enemies are everywhere, I'm starting with only a pistol, and weapons are hard to find. I'm basically running around, trying to find a weapon, ending up stuck with pinkies or imps between me and going back, then dying. I'm starting to think of either giving myself a ton of ammo with cheats for this level or lowering the difficulty as Ultra-Violence doesn't seem very fair on this level.

 

So far, I think Doom 1 is pretty fun considering its age but it isn't the most fun experience. If you die, starting with a pistol by default sucks. It can be challenging in order to find a new weapon to use but it's irritating sometimes that I had to load a save to start with more weapons as I didn't want to do that hunt. Sometimes the design works well and you're able to find your way around with certain landmarks. Other times, the default repeating wall texture used a lot makes it hard to discern where you are, even when just sitting and staring down a hallway. The cramped corridors sometimes work but sometimes they are just annoying. The secrets also aren't fun to find sometimes... or rewarding. If there's a critique against the weapons, I think the chaingun being a fancy pistol that shoots faster is underwhelming. It's a neat upgrade, but the lack of ammo hurts sometimes. I wish it would deal a bit more damage than the pistol. Also, the weapon switching is a bit too slow for my taste.

 

That's about it. Feel free to tell me I'm wrong or doing things wrong or other thoughts.

[Shepardus]

I also had trouble with ammo when I first played E2 on UV, and had to get through E2M4 mostly pacifist to save up some ammo. One thing you probably haven't realized (I didn't back then) is that the berserk pack increases fist damage for the rest of the level, not just when the screen is red. It becomes one of the more powerful weapons in the game if you can get used to the finicky hit detection, and it consumes no ammo. E2 gives you a lot of opportunities to cruise through levels with berserk and stock up plenty of ammo as a result.

[Ranger Qwerty]

Going forward, I recommend picking Hey, Not Too Rough or Hurt Me Plenty on your first run-through of a campaign and working your way up from there. Do seek out the secrets, ammo management becomes easier as you learn more about the map. For what the Pistol is worth, tap the fire button instead of holding it down so your shots will always go straight ahead. Drink plenty of water and take a break if it gets too frustrating. Glad you're having fun, Rip and Tear!

Edited August 29 by Ranger Qwerty : I can't stress this enough

[Tembry-Glintstone]

52 minutes ago, Ranger Qwerty said:

Going forward, I recommend picking Hey, Not Too Rough or Hurt Me Plenty on your first run-through of a campaign and working your way up from there.

 

Seconding this. As much as i liked Ultra-Violence in the Past, I cannot stress enough how much more fun Hurt me Plenty is with the (usually) more frequent pickups.

[Maximum Matt]

Play Okuplok before you do Episode 3

[Eurisko]

HMP had been my difficulty since PS1 Doom. 
Definitely give that a go. Nice to see new folks picking up the game.    

[vanilla_d00m]

Good job, are you going to do all episodes??  I was the one to only complete the first one and not bother with the rest.  I'm shure there where people like this.  I did recall seeing a youtube channel with a doom walkthrough playlist only showing EP1 many years back.

 

 

Edited August 30 by vanilla_d00m

[Sw33t Angela]

18 hours ago, Tembry-Glintstone said:

 

Seconding this. As much as i liked Ultra-Violence in the Past, I cannot stress enough how much more fun Hurt me Plenty is with the (usually) more frequent pickups.

 

Well with how others are saying UV is less fun, I might just do HMP now.

I did get past Episode 2 on UV yesterday! E2M7 is a bitch, but finding the box room with a lot of pinkies and the Berserk pack and invuln inside helped. I was able to get breathing room to think and the map became more fun. However, it was still frustrating to get ammo and I didn't backtrack to explore after getting the blue key because there were so many cacodemons and a baron of hell in one room. E2M8 with the cyberdemon was much easier. The difficult part was not firing a rocket and having a passing lost soul intercept and make me take insane damage.

E3 starts out really interesting but opening the first door and finding a cacodemon to engage with only a pistol isn't my ideal of fun. E3M2 has a cool map and it was interesting figuring out how to get ammo efficiently, but then UV rears its head and I'm facing so many demons with a starting pistol after dying that its getting in the way again. One thing I've figured out it that it's okay to pass enemies looking for a weapon. Nightmare with starting pistol sounds like hell here. E3M3 again has an interesting map, and I found the BFG secret! There were many times I just didn't have ammo to handle things and had to backtrack to take care of it especially after getting killed; honestly toggling an option that we don't lose weapons/ammo on death exposed by KEX may be better... or just toggling off UV.

E3M4 is less notable; I think it falls into the trap of Episode 2 levels where it has lot of corridors with the same walls but definitely not to the same degree as E2. The place with the pillars that crush was confusing as there's three switches on the wall. First time, I was trying to activate all the switches and it raised the platforms underneath the crushing pillars. Second time around after a death, I was only able to activate 1 switch? This was confusing. I also *hate* when a secret has a switch and a raising platform that *will not lower after you pressed it*. I hit the button and before I had time to process it, the platform was going up and there was no way to get it back. This is not good level design.

E3M4 is where I've left off so far and still have to complete it. I think I'll be switching to HMP as it takes a while to finish levels right now and deaths add to that time especially when I start with nothing but a pistol. UV has a certain amount of fun to it with finding ammo and dealing with a large amount of enemies (which makes using the BFG/Chaingun/Plasma Rifle all the more fun) but I think it is clear that this difficulty is made for an additional challenge *after* you already know the map. I'm so used to taking on the harder difficulties in many games and, honestly, I think I need to not do that unless I'm experienced with the game already.

Episode 2 is I think a major weak point for Doom 1, especially for the later levels and on the UV difficulty where it seems like they just throw harder enemies early in the level with little way to deal with them. E2M7 is my least favorite level because of that. The design of those levels is very bland most of the time compared to E1 and E3. Not sure what happened there in development; last levels to be designed/redesigned maybe and they rushed? Episode 3 has a beautiful aesthetic and breaks up the monotony with you actually being in hell.

 

 

Edited August 30 by Sw33t Angela

[Sw33t Angela]

As for weapons:

 

Pistol is okay for a starting weapon so long as you can find other weapons in time. Really prefer using the shotgun or chaingun over this. I understand that single firing makes it dead accurate, but still, the lack of damage just weighs it down. Wish exploding barrels were a little weaker as it would give this a better usage to accurately hit a barrel to take out enemies.

 

Shotgun is nice and the go to; I try to use it when possible to conserve other ammo. Can deal okay with large groups of enemies but you start to struggle with it to take out cacodemons and higher health enemies. Can't wait for the super shotgun in Doom 2.

 

I had a rethink about the chaingun and it's improved in my eyes considering that it can easily stunlock an enemy which is useful with cacodemons. Ammo can be plentiful with plenty of troopers around. It can also handle masses of enemies pretty well when firing a lot. Still, a little more damage per bullet would go a long way to making this a better weapon. Having to wait a long time just to kill a single cacodemon, standing there with him stunned in pain, is not exactly *fun*. This is usually my backup to the shotgun if I'm out of shotgun shells.

 

Chainsaw is... not great. On one hand, it's decent to use if I have no weapons and need to stunlock single enemies at time. On the other hand, you have to get close, enemies with lower pain chances will tear you apart, it's near useless with so many enemies, and if you have the berserk pack for the level, you are better off using your fist as you can two or one shot pinkies. I think this would improve if the DPS skyrocketed with the berserk pack, maybe even increasing pain chance with it.

 

Rockets are easily a mixed bag and dependent on the level. They are powerful, they do area damage so it can be easier to wipe out enemies. However, two things hold it back. If you're in a cramped level, you will not want to use rockets as you can easily kill yourself or at least wipe most of your armor and health (again dependent on level design). In addition, you can't find many rockets in many levels of Doom. This just makes using rockets rare even if you find the secrets for them. UV makes both of these points worse as you run into more enemies that make it hard to not also hit yourself and the lack of ammo makes you heavily consider when you should use rockets.

 

The plasma gun is fun. It does a lot of DPS, not too accurate but that's good to deal with groups of enemies, and the firing sound is neat if not earsplitting at loud game volume. The recoil delay really does make me think twice about releasing the trigger even to readjust and that is a nice little additional challenge to this gun. The only thing working against it is the lack of ammo and it burning through cells, and again, I think me playing on UV is preventing this gun from shining more in my play-through. It's also sometimes difficult to find the plasma gun in levels, so often I'll have ammo but no plasma gun and that makes me a sad girl. :(

 

BFG... what's there to say about the BFG except I feel I get a grin a mile wide like Doomguy does on his portrait finding it the first time. It does a lot of damage and takes care of so many enemies and is so worth the 40 cells most of the time. My favorite weapon out of everything here, but obviously balanced by its rarity and the amount of ammo it consumes so I try to use it wisely. My only wish is it would appear earlier during Episode 2 of Doom as UV can have those moments with a ton of ambushing enemies where I wish I had it.

 

I think if I were to try to add a weapon to the game, I'd add a sniper weapon that does a lot of hitscan damage. It would take a while to fire between shots so it wouldn't be great to use in CQC. It'd fill in the niche where I don't want to waste rockets on one enemy farther back and that there's no other accurate weapon that will do a ton of damage far away. But then this would probably run counter to the run-and-gun nature of Classic Doom so I can definitely understand this not being implemented in mods often.

[VGA]

Quickly single-tapping the Chaingun makes it work as a sniper. The first shot of the pistol and the Chaingun are always accurate. If you hold down the Fire button then the followup shots are less accurate.